Johannesburg- August 28, 2018 – Nielsen has added a new product solution to their Shopper toolkit - a creative and unique solution for retailers and manufacturers globally, helping them get closer to shopper behaviour at the moment of truth and uncover What's Next.

The solution helps retailers measure, evaluate and optimize a range of retail concepts on sales and profit, based on how target shoppers react at the moment of truth, in any store format. It helps measure the effectiveness of Point of Sale Merchandise (POSM) based on what shoppers “See, Think and Do”.

SMARTSTORE is designed to radically transform how the industry conducts shopper research today by creating a remarkably realistic and immersive simulation of a 3D, 360 total store environment. Testing in a virtual environment eliminates the unnecessary risk of trial-and-error execution because things can be perfected thus providing retailers with cost, time and flexibility.

Sue Temple, VP Global Product Development, Nielsen Consumer Insights Division says, “This solution has been put together using the latest virtual reality technology available and adapting it to create a unique, fully immersive shopper research and merchandising solution. We have partnered with our clients through our SMARTSTORE development process in pilot projects over the last several months to make sure it meets their needs as we bring SMARTSTORE to life. We are excited with today’s launch and hope this would drive greater insights into shopper behaviours at the moment of truth and build collaborative partnership between retailers and manufacturers in South Africa.”

SMARTSTORE builds a live environment, creating multiple scenarios helping in comprehensive analytics of shoppers experience (track shopper head, eye and feet movements, 3D heat maps, etc). This also drives affordable research costs for retailers through the “Attention, Appeal, Action” framework thus building confidence in commercial results and measurable ROI on research investment.

Nielsen South Africa Consumer Insights Director, Kim Reddy comments; “The beauty of this technology is that it allows us to custom build different scenarios, according to client specifications and their research needs. We can then observe shoppers as they shop in the ‘store’ and ask questions without any delay. We’re also able to create scenarios for modern, convenience and traditional trade store formats which make this solution highly relevant for the South African market.”

ABOUT NIELSEN

Nielsen Holdings plc (NYSE: NLSN) is a global measurement and data analytics company that provides the most complete and trusted view available of consumers and markets worldwide. Our approach marries proprietary Nielsen data with other data sources to help clients around the world understand what’s happening now, what’s happening next, and how to best act on this knowledge. For more than 90 years Nielsen has provided data and analytics based on scientific rigor and innovation, continually developing new ways to answer the most important questions facing the media, advertising, retail and fast-moving consumer goods industries. An S&P 500 company, Nielsen has operations in over 100 countries, covering more than 90% of the world’s population. For more information, visitwww.nielsen.com.